Multiplayer Tension in the Wild: A Hearthstone Case

Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom; Dávid Melhárt; Antonios Liapis; Georgios N. Yannakakis; Sander Bakkes; Pieter Spronck

doi:10.1145/3582437.3582440

Multiplayer Tension in the Wild: A Hearthstone Case

Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom, Dávid Melhárt, Antonios Liapis, Georgios N. Yannakakis, Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Games are designed to elicit strong emotions during game play, especially when players are competing against each other. Artificial Intelligence applied to predict a player's emotions has mainly been tested on single-player experiences in low-stakes settings and short-term interactions. How do players experience and manifest affect in high-stakes competitions, and which modalities can capture this? This paper reports a first experiment in this line of research, using a competition of the video game Hearthstone where both competing players' game play and facial expressions were recorded over the course of the entire match which could span up to 41 minutes. Using two experts' annotations of tension using a continuous video affect annotation tool, we attempt to predict tension from the webcam footage of the players alone. Treating both the input and the tension output in a relative fashion, our best models reach 66.3% average accuracy (up to 79.2% at the best fold) in the challenging leave-one-participant out cross-validation task. This initial experiment shows a way forward for affect annotation in games "in the wild"in high-stakes, real-world competitive settings.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023
Editors	Phil Lopes, Filipe Luz, Antonios Liapis, Henrik Engstrom
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450398565
ISBN (Print)	9781450398558
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3582440
Publication status	Published - 12 Apr 2023
Event	18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023 - Lisbon, Portugal Duration: 11 Apr 2023 → 14 Apr 2023

Publication series

Name	ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference	18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023
Country/Territory	Portugal
City	Lisbon
Period	11/04/23 → 14/04/23

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the Tilburg University Esports Association “Link” for their collaboration. Antonios Liapis and Georgios N. Yannakakis were supported by the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 951911).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 ACM.

Funding

The authors would like to thank the Tilburg University Esports Association “Link” for their collaboration. Antonios Liapis and Georgios N. Yannakakis were supported by the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 951911).

Keywords

competitive games
facial expression analysis
Player affect
player modeling

Access to Document

10.1145/3582437.3582440

3582437.3582440Final published version, 6.06 MB

Cite this

Mavromoustakos-Blom, P., Melhárt, D., Liapis, A., Yannakakis, G. N., Bakkes, S., & Spronck, P. (2023). Multiplayer Tension in the Wild: A Hearthstone Case. In P. Lopes, F. Luz, A. Liapis, & H. Engstrom (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023 Article 16 (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3582440

Mavromoustakos-Blom, Paris ; Melhárt, Dávid ; Liapis, Antonios et al. / Multiplayer Tension in the Wild : A Hearthstone Case. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023. editor / Phil Lopes ; Filipe Luz ; Antonios Liapis ; Henrik Engstrom. Association for Computing Machinery, 2023. (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series).

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abstract = "Games are designed to elicit strong emotions during game play, especially when players are competing against each other. Artificial Intelligence applied to predict a player's emotions has mainly been tested on single-player experiences in low-stakes settings and short-term interactions. How do players experience and manifest affect in high-stakes competitions, and which modalities can capture this? This paper reports a first experiment in this line of research, using a competition of the video game Hearthstone where both competing players' game play and facial expressions were recorded over the course of the entire match which could span up to 41 minutes. Using two experts' annotations of tension using a continuous video affect annotation tool, we attempt to predict tension from the webcam footage of the players alone. Treating both the input and the tension output in a relative fashion, our best models reach 66.3% average accuracy (up to 79.2% at the best fold) in the challenging leave-one-participant out cross-validation task. This initial experiment shows a way forward for affect annotation in games {"}in the wild{"}in high-stakes, real-world competitive settings.",

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note = "Funding Information: The authors would like to thank the Tilburg University Esports Association “Link” for their collaboration. Antonios Liapis and Georgios N. Yannakakis were supported by the European Union{\textquoteright}s H2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 951911). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 ACM.; 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023 ; Conference date: 11-04-2023 Through 14-04-2023",

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Mavromoustakos-Blom, P, Melhárt, D, Liapis, A, Yannakakis, GN, Bakkes, S & Spronck, P 2023, Multiplayer Tension in the Wild: A Hearthstone Case. in P Lopes, F Luz, A Liapis & H Engstrom (eds), Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023., 16, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Association for Computing Machinery, 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023, Lisbon, Portugal, 11/04/23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3582440

Multiplayer Tension in the Wild: A Hearthstone Case. / Mavromoustakos-Blom, Paris; Melhárt, Dávid; Liapis, Antonios et al.
Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023. ed. / Phil Lopes; Filipe Luz; Antonios Liapis; Henrik Engstrom. Association for Computing Machinery, 2023. 16 (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

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Mavromoustakos-Blom P, Melhárt D, Liapis A, Yannakakis GN, Bakkes S, Spronck P. Multiplayer Tension in the Wild: A Hearthstone Case. In Lopes P, Luz F, Liapis A, Engstrom H, editors, Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2023. Association for Computing Machinery. 2023. 16. (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series). doi: 10.1145/3582437.3582440

Multiplayer Tension in the Wild: A Hearthstone Case

Abstract

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Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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